More university students have jumped to the defense of their lecturers to condemn the proposal to create a National Research Fund.
The Student Representative Council (SRC) of the University of Cape Coast (UCC) has pledged its support to their colleagues from the University of Ghana who believe that government was wrong with the new proposal.
Government has explained that the fund was to permanently address the perennial conflict on research and book allowance between government and University lecturers.
But in an interview with Citi News, SRC President of UCC, David Boakye described government’s decision as irresponsible.
“Their statement is very untimely and I am not surprised that has aggravated their [Lecturers] stance the more because I don’t know who thought through that. The people are specifically on strike because of that specific money; research allowance.”
He criticized government for not making moves to start negotiations with University lecturers to call off their strike considering that schools were scheduled to re-open soon.
In a related development, students from University of Ghana pleaded with government to rescind its decision to establish the fund.
Some of the students appealed to government “to revise its negotiation techniques" stating that "as at this time by next week, lectures will start in earnest and we have new batch of students coming which in itself will be a load on the school so we need these lecturers in school"
"this is not the time to grapple over how they are going to solve a certain issue as research and book allowance” they added.
Another student also suggested that government “should just go ahead and pay the arrears and start implementing the new policy because you are owing somebody and instead of paying the person, you are bringing new policy to cancel the old one.”
“We need our lecturers back in school and if possible, the arrears should be paid to our lecturers as soon as possible so that we can just come to school,” another student opined.
Meanwhile, University lecturers and Polytechnic teachers will be holding separate meetings on Friday to deliberate over their next line of action following the latest development.
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